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Saturday, 19 December 2015

await VS Wait() when Task throws exception

await and Wait() are two versions of the operation "wait for the task to complete": one is asynchronous (non-blocking) and the other one is synchronous (blocking). They are both capable of capturing the exception thrown from the task but they behave in a different way when propagating exception information up the stack: they themselves throw different type of exception.

await (case 1) propagates the original exception so the output is:

System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
at Program.<>c.b__1_0()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1.InnerInvoke()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at Program.d__1.MoveNext()
Task.Status: Faulted
Task.IsFaulted: True
Task.Exception: System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. ---> System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
at Program.<>c.b__1_0()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1.InnerInvoke()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at Program.d__1.MoveNext()
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
---> (Inner Exception #0) System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
at Program.<>c.b__1_0()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1.InnerInvoke()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at Program.d__1.MoveNext()Wait() (case 2) wraps original exception in System.AggregateException:

System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. ---> System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
at Program.<>c.b__1_0()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1.InnerInvoke()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute()
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Wait(Int32 millisecondsTimeout, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Wait()
at Program.d__1.MoveNext()
---> (Inner Exception #0) System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
at Program.<>c.b__1_0()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1.InnerInvoke()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute() System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
at Program.<>c.b__1_0()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1.InnerInvoke()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute()
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
---> (Inner Exception #0) System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
at Program.<>c.b__1_0()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1.InnerInvoke()
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute()
Note that Task.Exception in both cases holds System.AggregateException.
This difference comes from the desire of async-await implementers to keep use of await as simple as possible and to make its use to look like synchronous code as much as possible. System.AggregateException is not used in synchronous code (in non-TPL code) and we there always catch the first exception that is thrown from a try-block. That is why await is designed in such way so it throws only the first exception from a task (or aggregate of tasks) as usually we are interested only in that first exception (we usually handle the first error that occurs).